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LIVE! Crown Princess Hawaii/South Pacific 10/17 - 11/14

traveling1969

By traveling1969,
in Princess Cruises

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coo359a2

coo359a2

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Please let us know how the shuttle to the port worked out.

 

a) Were you able to get on one at 10:00 or did so many people line up for one you had to wait?

 

b) What did the hotel charge for the shuttle?

 

Bill, for any staying at the Crowne Plaza, the shuttle is $5 pp, no reservations first come first go and starts at 10:30 and runs every 30. Minutes. I think we will walk and stay out of the shuttle mess.

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traveling1969

traveling1969

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Thanks dear friends for the e-mail this AM. Glad to hear you are on your way safely. Talked to the North Country folks and they all say they are to get snow tonight. Had a great time with Kay and Ron here.

We will enjoy your trip this way as we take day by day with the health issues and then off to Florida.

Welcome Aboard!

 

Harry

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judygund

judygund

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Still at best western. Late shuttle. Wish we had known could have called to set up. Our suite here is so nice. Met Harry and brown blonde at breakfast. Wish we were on the ship. Oh, well, once on, will be there 28 days...don't sail without us.

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lrw1974

lrw1974

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Aloha Everyone!

 

Just a quick note to let everyone know we made it to San Pedro, California, which is the port of L.A. Traffic was crazy, and I sure was glad Billy was driving!

 

We got here on Thursday and visited the Reagan Library. It was up on top of a hill overlooking the area and what a view! Library was really nice and interesting. When he won the election the first time, it was my second time to vote - telling my age, I know 😎

 

Yesterday we played catchup getting unpacked and repacked and then doing a Walmart run for stuff we were out of. We had to pick up something too for Halloween... also got a little Halloween candy for kiddos on the cruise. We figure there will not be too many!

 

Billy dropped me off at the ship a little while ago with all the luggage. He is taking the car back to the hotel and will catch the shuttle back over here. We are less than three miles to the hotel so it was very convenient.

 

Will try to keep everyone posted over the next four weeks. This is definitely a bucket list item and maybe two!

 

The islands are calling! 🍍⚓️🚢🍷🐠⚓️🍍

 

Lanee & Billy

 

 

 

Lanee Warrick

Sent from my iPad

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Pia1913

Pia1913

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At this point you should all be out of your hotels and on the ship. I'm really looking forward to following the Live and reliving the ports from when we did this cruise.

 

Harry: we have a whole lot of friends on board, so this thread will be special for me.

 

Charles: will you do your own, or just posting to this one?

 

My friends: you know who you are; keep in touch via your free internet. ;)

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hpeabody

hpeabody

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i have friends on this sailing. they have 6pm confirmed. ship says, no 6pm has to be 5:30pm. anybody else with the small problem?

 

I have found this to be the case for the last couple years. At first it really annoyed me, but now I have learned it will not be whatever I see on the website but will be what ever the ship wants it to be. I just wait and look at my cruise card when I get onboard. I think all the ships pretty much have gone to 5:30 or 5:45 for early seating or both using 2 different dining rooms. I have not seen 6:00 in a very long time.

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kerrydee

kerrydee

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I have found this to be the case for the last couple years. At first it really annoyed me, but now I have learned it will not be whatever I see on the website but will be what ever the ship wants it to be. I just wait and look at my cruise card when I get onboard. I think all the ships pretty much have gone to 5:30 or 5:45 for early seating or both using 2 different dining rooms. I have not seen 6:00 in a very long time.

 

thank you, i will pass this along to them.

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stargazers

stargazers

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Like Nina, we recently cancelled this trip. David is doing well, his treatments are continuing. I look forward to reading about your trip and hope to learn through you as we hope to try again, and do this trip in the future.

 

Thank you, ahead of time, to everyone who posts from onboard. I know you will have a fabulous time! Can't wait to see pictures and read of your adventures!

 

Kristy :)

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traveling1969

traveling1969

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Well, we made it. Boarding was a little late but no hoo hoo. Met with the Maitre'd and got our 6 top change to a 4 top for two. Did the muster thing and then went to the Elite lounge.

 

We were able to get our favorite (Chairman of the Board) instead of the daily special (margarita) so for you folks who have your favorite as we do it was no problem. Met a few folks from our roll call notably Holomoku. Engaged his group in a little impromptu karaoke as we sailed by Catalina island. Can you guess? Here's a hint: :40 kilometers in a leaky old boat". Met our go-to waiter, Edward, who took very good care of us.

 

The Crown is one of our favorite ships with lots of good memories. She looks to be holding up well. Din din on tap in a few. Joyce is in the casino bolstering CCL stock. Oh well. someone's got to do it. We are well on our way so come along for the ride.

 

Harry

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ccruisequeen

ccruisequeen

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saw the Crown enter the channel in front of our hotel (Crowne Plaza) about 6:45 am. Took about 30 minutes for it to dock at what I guess is Pier 93. It isn't the "bubble" building which must be Pier 91. The Crown sure loooked extra large going in front of the hotel.Now it is our turn to board the ship and being our long awaited cruise.

 

I'm glad we were able to entertain you this morning. I had a great time. Tell Brenda and Sasha of the entertainment staff Cheri said hi!

 

27926-profile.png

 

Copyofth_Carnival-VIFP-Platinum_zps41db4d4e1_zps02e438c7.jpgI still cruise for Warm Chocolate Melting Cake (with 2 sugar free ice creams)

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traveling1969

traveling1969

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Hello again,

 

Just finished our first meal on the Crown. In a word, Spectacular!

 

We met our wait staff; Vladyslav our waiter, from Ukraine and Esmail from India and we couldn't be more pleased with them. We ordered the silver wine package and started off with the Baron. Rothchilds Mouton Cadet bordeaux.

 

A great choice to compliment our mains which were the always the available medallions of beef served rare. Joyce started with the red snapper mojito ceviche with lime, mango, avocado and rum. She raved and raved and finally I had a taste. Well, her raves were justified. She followed that with a delightful artichoke bisque which was to die for. Our medallions were done exactly as we like them, rare rare rare. These were perhaps the best medallions we have ever had, tender, flavorful and complimented with a mix of vegetables and roasted potatoes. Joyce (bless her heart) decided to forego desert but I just had to have some of the butter almond ice cream and I'm glad I did. It was a creamy, crunchy delight.

 

I decided to head to the internet cafe to post while Joyce opted to head to the casino. All in all a great first day on the wonderful Crown Princess. Aw shucks, only 27 more days to go! Stay tuned for more.

 

Harry

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caribill

caribill

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Bill, for any staying at the Crowne Plaza, the shuttle is $5 pp, no reservations first come first go and starts at 10:30 and runs every 30. Minutes. I think we will walk and stay out of the shuttle mess.

 

Every 30 minutes with dozens of people wanting to use it? No wonder you choose to walk.

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ccrain

ccrain

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At this point you should all be out of your hotels and on the ship. I'm really looking forward to following the Live and reliving the ports from when we did this cruise.

 

Harry: we have a whole lot of friends on board, so this thread will be special for me.

 

Charles: will you do your own, or just posting to this one?

 

My friends: you know who you are; keep in touch via your free internet. ;)

 

For everyone's convenience, its just better to post on one thread so that future cruisers can see multiple perspectives in one thread.

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ccrain

ccrain

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Good morning from the IC of the Crown. First day at sea and so far its proving to be a very interesting trip. We got a wonderful surprise yesterday. As this is our 34th anniversary cruise, Paul and Elizabeth decided to surprise us by showing up on this cruise. (We met Paul and Elizabeth on a 2009 Golden cruise and have been close friends ever since.) They deliberately hid this little tidbit of information from us. And with my work schedule we weren’t even sure we were going up until we actually got on the ship! But seeing them in the terminal was a very nice surprise!

 

So this is going to be a really interesting 29 day cruise.

 

With that said, let’s dive into the cruise.

 

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Charles, here with my wife Judy. We caught the cruising bug on our first cruise in 2001 to Alaska and have been hooked ever since. This is cruise #39 for us, all on Princess. Judy and I like to relax on a cruise, see new and interesting places, dance, eat, sleep, work out and just have a real good time. This particular cruise has always been on our list. We’ve cancelled it twice before. We even had the first Tahiti cruise Princess offered booked, but had to cancel that one. In the midst of my work schedule, we had to cancel the Australia trip this year and the Norway-Sweden trip, and next February’s South American trip, but I really did not want to cancel this trip. Our last cruise was in June when we took our granddaughter, Ally, on her first cruise to show her the cruise industry. She wants to be a cruise director and is now in college headed down that road. Hopefully we provided her a little motivation.

 

So back to the cruise at hand. This is the 29 day Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti cruise. We stop in Hilo, Honolulu, Lahaina, Apia, Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango), Bora Bora, Moorea and Papeete. For this cruise we have schedule a lot of CC rollcall group tours. The most we’ve ever done. In fact, we have no Princess tours scheduled.

 

In Hilo we plan to stock up on Halloween candy for the crew (and we brought some as well), yes our door is decorated and we brought Top SECRET costumes (no not dressed as an email), and getting a few new matching Aloha shirts at Wal Mart. In Honolulu we just plan to walk around and possibly see if we can get a stand up paddleboard lesson. In Lahaina we plan to see about SUP lessons or kayaking. In Nawilliwilli we have a flight seeing excursion planned with Wings Over Kauai.

 

In Apia, we are doing a group private CC tour to Manano Island. In Pago Pago we are probably grabbing a sight seeing taxi and ending up at $2 beach for lunch. In Bora Bora we are on Patrick’s Tour with the CC group. In Moorea we are on Hiro’s tour. All of these tours are highly rated on TripAdvisor and we wanted to snorkel, swim and eat the local food in the South Pacific. I hope I can do the tours justice when I talk about them later in the blog.

 

This cruise has a lot of sea days. And we have one of our favorite CDs. Kelvin Joy. We’ve sailed with him twice before, including a 35 day Asia trip that still ranks in the top 2. The staff really gets tired on a cruise with lots of sea days. They will probably sleep through the ports! The Captain is Justin Lawes and he’s just a kid! The matre de is Neville Salhanha. We have 4 formal nights on this cruise. All at sea days. Two Halloweens.

 

The Crown is, IMHO, the peak of the Fincanteri Super Grand design class of ship, along with the Emerald and Ruby, with the Caribbean being the first of the class. Purpose built with the extra Riviera deck of people, the non-elevated Skywalkers and MUTS designed in from the get go. Our 2nd favorite class of ship next to the original Grand class. (Lots of things to do, well they used to have more space, but more about that later.) It’s a shame we are losing the Golden and Emerald to Oceania after losing the Diamond and Sapphire.

 

We have the normal Caribe deck balcony cabin. Our favorite cabin besides the aft balconies. Would have loved a suite on this trip, but you can do 4 cruises in a balcony for one in a suite. Besides, we’ve been in a balcony for 51 days and haven’t killed each other yet.

 

So let’s get into embarkation day and some of the details gleaned from the patters.

 

The Hilton provides a complimentary shuttle to the port. Rather than sit around the hotel, we got the 1000 shuttle to the port. Seated right away, we got to board around 12:30. There are 800+ elites on this cruise so they have moved the elite lounge to Fusion. That will put a bit of a damper on early dance venues, but the larger impact is the Salty Dog. Not sure if it runs every night, but it essentially takes over the wheelhouse from 1800 to 2200. A $19 pp cover charge applies. I have mixed feelings about this. It purports to offer a gastropub experience, which we will check out during this cruise, but it also removes a dance venue from the schedule leaving only Explorers and Fusion, but not during shows. We’ll see how it goes during this cruise.

 

Luggage arrived around 1400. Pizza and a drink for lunch, met with Paul and Elizabeth, hit the Elite lounge. We briefly stopped by at the deck party to see the crew. Found out Matais is the deputy. We had him on the Golden in June to Alaska. But also found out that Jamie will join the ship in HI and Samantha sometime afterwards. That will be very fun!

 

The embarkation patter doesn’t list the shows or movies or theme nights on this cruise. A feature I do like on other ships. But Woman in Gold was playing on MUTS and I’ve wanted to see that movie, so Judy and I watched Helen Mirren. It’s a really good movie. I liked both lead characters, but Helen stole the show, although I was really rooting for her to pull out her RED sniper rifle and take out a few of the specially orificed officials. (Note Kelvin replays the MUTS feature as an afternoon matinee the next day whenever possible. I like this approach very much.)

 

After the movie we saw the welcome aboard show. A new choreographed opening for us. The headlining comedian was AJ Jamal. Funny guy. We will have to make it to his full show.

 

We decided to call it a night after the welcome aboard show. Slept like a baby until about 0330 this morning. Time to get up and start the blog! So let’s look at the patter and upcoming activities today over a cup of coffee in the IC.

 

BTW, they only have one espresso machine in the IC on the Crown. This will make for crowding during the morning rush for sure. The Golden had two and three barristers and it had a long line at times. So plan for the day. Since it is Sunday, church services take over Fusion from 9-10, so Zumba will be at 1000 this morning. Judy wants to do Hula dancing at 1430. Today is also football (American) and that will dominate MUTS. We have several enrichment lectures. Joe Condrill is one lecturer whom we met on deck yesterday during sailaway. Sharron Feff is the other. Joe is giving a lecture on the Age of Discovery in the Pacific at 1000 and Sharron is giving a Port lecture on the Big Island at 1100. We have a third lecturer in Frank Sandstrom giving a lecture on the Wright Brothers at 1300.

 

There are various lei making classes, an ukulele class, hula class and an afternoon tailgate party for football. Tonight has Dan Horn, ventriloquist, as the headliner, the Jeopardized game show, Karaoke, the Tritone Duo is in Fusion, the party band Fusion is in Explorer’s, along with a dance set by the orchestra, a Mariachi “Los Brillantes” in the Piazza.

 

Lots to do, lots of sea days to do it in. Later y’all!

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homeinboca

homeinboca

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Charles,

 

Great start to the cruise and your live from. I'll be following with great interest as we were booked on this cruise, but had to cancel. Judging by the huge following on the roll call, this should be a great trip.

 

Ron

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